“Western languages are ruled by law. Chinese language is ruled by man.”

The Basics about Chinese Language

Formation of Chinese characters

The origin of the Chinese antique script is very long and there are not enough documentary resources about its history. Chinese characters can be traced to a time when people made records in their daily life by tying knots in ropes or strings. The most accepted legend is that the inventor of Chinese writing was a minister named Ts’ang Chieh, who recorded the history in the court of Emperor Huang Ti, the first king of China.

People in different regions of China speak differently, including such dialects as Mandarin, Min Nan, Hakka, Cantonese, etc. But while certain characters may be pronounced differently depending on the dialect, the meaning and the written Chinese language is the same for everyone. Mandarin is the official spoken language of the People’s Republic of China.

There are three elements in a Chinese character: image (form), sound, and meaning. There are also six principles that used to define and explicate the characters:

1. Pictograms (象形)

Pictograms are words formed from things which can be drawn (such as animals, a person, or objects.)

2. Simple Indicatives (指事)

Simple indicatives are words formed from things that cannot be drawn (such as directions or numbers.)

3. Compound Indicatives (會意)

Compound indicatives are words formed to be understood easily after the pictograph and indicatives are formed.

4. Phono-semantic Compound Characters (形聲)

A phono-semantic compound character represents a word that is formed from another word to which it is similar, with additional signs or characters added to make the new character. The word is pronounced like one of the original words.

5. Borrowed Characters (假借)

A borrowed character was originally borrowed from another word that was pronounced the same (a homophone).
For example, the character 來 lái depicts the wheat plant and meant wheat in ancient times — it was a pictogram. Because the words for wheat and to come were pronounced the same, the character 來 was then borrowed to write the verb to come. The pronunciation of the original word meaning wheat has changed in modern times to mài (now written 麥), and the original homophony between the two words has disappeared.
6. Derived characters (轉注)
Derived characters represent words that share the same root word or meaning.
For example, the characters 老 lǎo (old) and 考 kǎo (a test) are the most commonly cited examples of derived characters, which come from a common etymological root but differ in that one part is changed to indicate a different pronunciation and meaning.

6. Derived Characters (轉注)

Derived characters represent words that share the same root word or meaning.
For example, the characters 老 lǎo (old) and 考 kǎo (a test) are the most commonly cited examples of derived characters, which come from a common etymological root but differ in that one part is changed to indicate a different pronunciation and meaning.

Radicals

Every Chinese character has a radical or is itself a radical. There are 214 radicals today.
For example, 女 is the character for woman. It is also the radical for many female things: 姐姐 = little sister, 妈妈 = mamma, etc.

Radicals are used to tell something about the meaning of the character, such as is made of metal, is tall, etc.

Radicals are also used to look up characters in a dictionary. To find a character you look for the radical in a radical list. When you have found your radical you count the remaining number of strokes in the character. With this information it is now possible to find the character.

Strokes and stroke order

All Chinese characters build up from basic strokes. The simplest ones have only one stroke while the more complex ones can have more than 20–30 strokes. The strokes are to be written in the right order and in the right way. It is important to follow these rules.

The strokes are to be written in a certain order. There are very few rules but it is important to spend time learning them since they make it easier to remember the character. Your characters will also look better if you write them correctly. In China calligraphy is a highly regarded art form.

Note that there are additional rules when rules conflict. For example, rules may conflict when one stroke is to the bottom and left of another. Also, the last rule may conflict with other rules, however the overriding rule is top to bottom.

Processing Characters and Colours

Faciliation of Mandarin tone perception by visual speech

Obviously we do not only interpret audible, but also visible informations in talking. The Acoustical Society of America did some interesting research on that. “Interestingly, tone-naïve listeners outperformed native listeners in the Visual-Only condition, suggesting firstly that visual speech information for tone is available, and may in fact be under-used by normal-hearing tone language perceivers, and secondly that the perception of such information may be language-general, rather than the product of language-specific learning.”

Pictographs / The Origin of all Characters

Chinese and Western characters both derived from pictographs. Traffic signs are pictographs. They express a complex meaning by a picture (Greek “picto” = picture and “graph” = sign). Pictographs can be understood throughout all languages.

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Development of Chinese Characters

Phonographs

Western characters are called phonographs (Greek “phono” = sound and graph=sign). They show the spelling but do not represent the meaning. A foreign reader may pronounce a word, but not understand the meaning. The English word “Hut” has a very different meaning in German language (“Hat”).

Western Characters also derived from pictographs. The European Phoenicians (1000 – 500 BC) used the first types of characters as we still have now.

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D for “Dalet”, which means Door (looks like the triangle entrance of a tent)